It is both expected and also surprising that Cicero’s history of Roman orators begins with a survey of the craft in Greece (26–51). Greece had long been the cultural exemplum against which to measure artistic achievement at Rome. Surprising, however, is the length, range, and structure of the twofold digression, the first of many in the dialogue. It might seem superfluous for a critical history of speakers at Rome. Yet Cicero’s vision of Roman oratory requires looking to, emulating, and evolving beyond Greek achievements. The survey concludes with an embedded joke, a wink and a nudge for those who have paid close attention through the entire digression. Brevitas is commendable in certain parts of speaking but not in eloquence as a whole (brevitas autem laus est interdum in aliqua parte dicendi, in universa eloquentia laudem non habet, 50). Cicero then wonders if the synopsis of Greeks was all that necessary (forsitan fuerint non necessaria, 52). Brutus hesitates, with a touch of coyness, given that the digression announces several programmatic emphases. If anything the opening was pleasing and perhaps shorter than he would have liked (ista vero, inquit, quam necessaria fuerint non facile dixerim; iucunda certe mihi fuerunt neque solum non longa, sed etiam breviora quam vellem, 52). The response draws attention to the digression’s importance and reaffirms the rhetorical principle that Cicero had proposed earlier: brevity, though not a universal virtue, still suits certain rhetorical contexts.

The passage exudes polite urbanity but accomplishes much more, since the exchange relies on an important feature of Roman dialogue technique. It fulfills argumentative and persuasive functions, even in the case of apparently anodyne banter crafted to break up the monotony of sustained exposition. By confirming the pleasurable brevity of the synopsis, Brutus implicitly endorses the rhetoric that Cicero employs for the dialogue itself. Moreover, Cicero sets himself in good stead by showing that he appreciates and has mastered one aspect of rhetorical – and ultimately Atticist – values before challenging the fundamental tenets of brevity and Atticism as he perceives them.Footnote ¹ He also forestalls potential criticism that he has simply made a virtue of necessity because his preference for fullness arose from the inability or unwillingness to be terse. Cicero’s shunning embrace of brevitas reflects the dialogue’s treatment of the Atticists and the rhetorical strategies that constantly undermine them. He does not closely analyze stylistic differences or demonstrate his principles at length, as he will do months later in the Orator, which closely examines prose rhythm as a stylistic necessity for the grand oratory espoused by Cicero and spurned by his Atticist detractors.Footnote ² Instead, the arguments are largely rhetorical, rejecting Roman Atticism with a definitional quibble over the term Atticus before attempting to redefine and coopt Atticism in the service of his own rhetorical ideals.

For all the similarities of the Brutus to the Orator, the prevalent assumption has been that Cicero’s anti-Atticism is uniform and coherent across the works, a more or less stable and independent doctrine that finds its way into both dialogues.Footnote ³ Yet to understand Atticism as doctrine requires considering how it appears in each text, which for our purposes means asking how Cicero adapts the portrayal of it to the local considerations of the Brutus. The discussion of Atticism surfaces in a range of passages in addition to Cicero’s famous diatribe (284–91). The long section beginning with Calidius and running through Atticus’ objections are crucial to it (274–300). No less relevant is the Ciceropaideia (301–29, see Chapter 1), which contains his educational biography and a syncrisis with his great rival Hortensius. These passages challenge Atticism and Asianism and offer an intermediate alternative to the geographical binary Athens/Asia: Rhodes. Rhodianism is the stylistic tendency espoused in the Brutus, even if Cicero never illustrates what it entails.

The discussion of Atticism is intertwined with two tangential issues: the historical evaluation of early Roman orators, including the perplexing problem of antiquarianism (Cato and Lysias as stylistic models, 66–69, 292–300), and the best means by which to appropriate Greek culture, and, specifically, the emulation of Greek oratorical greats. Cicero crafts a grand narrative that attacks the so-called Atticists but then coopts their values with arguments that range from specious to spectacular. The terminology of the Atticism debate has its origins in Hellenistic thinkers, but Cicero reworks it in line with his own vision of grand oratory. Ultimately, he argues that only a diversity of Greek and Roman models can ensure the forceful and persuasive style required for the forensic (and therefore political) sphere.

An Overview of Atticism

The stylistic tendencies and debates transmitted along with the labels “Atticism” and “Asianism” have a fraught and uncertain history. In Greek letters the key terms, the verb ἀττικίζειν and the noun ἀττικισμός, originally indicated military allegiance to the Athenian polis, but the meaning gradually migrated from the military to the linguistic sphere, denoting the speaking of the Attic dialect rather than a neighboring one. With the establishment of Greek koine in the wake of Alexander the Great’s conquests, and with the natural linguistic evolution of speakers in Athens and the Greek world, the terms eventually came to denote the speaking of proper classical Attic, a mobile literary ideal rather than a fixed spoken reality.Footnote ⁴

Atticism also could denote a rhetorical (rather than linguistic) tendency. And in this sense it was opposed to Asianism (or the Asians, Asiani), which is even more of a conceptual unicorn, because it was only used in a negative sense to criticize the stylistic exuberance of someone else.Footnote ⁵ Authors never claimed that their own style was Asian. What’s more, the term had only a brief lifespan at Rome, lasting from Cicero’s writings in the 40s to the Greek Augustan critic and historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the 20s. Later discussions refer to these earlier debates and have little independent life beyond them. The originator of the decadent Asian style was allegedly Hegesias of Magnesia-on-Sipylus, a third-century bce writer from Asia Minor.Footnote ⁶ The stylistic faults of Asian speakers typically included short, choppy sentences without subordination (parataxis rather than hypotaxis), similar word endings (homoioteleuton), sing-song rhythms (especially the ditrochee) or lack of rhythmic variation, clauses of equal syllables (isocolon), and a penchant for extravagance and bombast.

Most evidence for the Atticism controversy comes (or is derived) from Cicero. The debate had yet to emerge, in the extant record, when Cicero wrote de Oratore (ca. 55 bce). This fact, along with the claim that Gaius Licinius Calvus misled others in his stylistic preferences and wanted to be called Atticus orator (284), has prompted the conclusion that Calvus spearheaded the movement of Roman Atticism among a younger generation of orators in the years before his untimely death at some point before 47 bce.Footnote ⁷ Cicero’s criticisms of Atticism are coherent unto themselves, yet the accuracy of his portrayal has been challenged, especially his assessment of Calvus (see below). Given the polemical tone of the debate, he most assuredly obscures as much as elucidates its terms. Later authors claim or suggest that detractors accused Cicero of Asianist tendencies, although he never cites such attacks in the Brutus or Orator, and instead ridicules the jejune weakness of the Atticists and criticizes the unreformed Asianism of his biographical foil Hortensius. If ancient authors never called themselves Asianists, Cicero extends the taboo by never claiming that his rivals had pinned the label on him. We do learn of his exuberant delivery as a young man (discussed in Chapter 1). He dampened his excesses while in Rhodes, but nowhere mentions being called Asianus/Asiaticus. He consistently and doggedly aligns his developing talent with Rhodianism, the stylistic middle ground between these two extremes.Footnote ⁸

Criticisms of the Atticists in the Orator are fairly straightforward and familiar from the Brutus:Footnote ⁹ their overly simplistic style barely merits the title Attic (Orat. 23–32; cf. Orat. 231, 234–35); they prefer the simplest of three styles, the genus tenue, which receives extensive treatment (Orat. 75–90). The Orator focuses on prose rhythm and consequently portrays the Atticists’ neglect of its persuasive potential. The simple style is restrained and lacks ornatus (“embellishment,” Orat. 79), but requires considerable skill to master. It has a studied, carefree quality, nicely summed up with etymological wordplay as “a kind of diligent neglect” (quaedam etiam neglegentia est diligens, Orat. 78). It is likened to a woman who stands out for natural rather than made-up beauty (Orat. 79). Ornamental devices are used sparingly and with an eye toward propriety. Humor, especially wit, should be part of the stylistic repertoire, a virtue mastered by the Athenians but ignored by the Roman Attici (Orat. 89–90).

While the Orator discusses Atticism more directly and coherently, the Brutus integrates the debate into various issues spread across the length of the dialogue. Oratorical decline – as much a possibility of stylistic development as continued progress – beset Greek oratory after the classical period and is described in geographical terms as movement from Athens to Asia (51). The exemplary role that Lysias plays for the Atticists is tied to the early history of Roman oratory through the unbalanced and murky comparison with Cato the Elder (63–69). Linguistic purism, a crucial feature of Greek Atticism, especially among later Greek imperial authors, has a parallel in the discussion of Caesar and his treatise on language regulation, de Analogia (251–62), but plays only an indirect part in the attack on Atticism.Footnote ¹⁰ The core discussion of Atticism (283–91) is intertwined with a discussion of Calvus, itself one of the digressions built into the discussion of Hortensius, as we are intermittently reminded (e.g. sed redeamus rursus ad Hortensium, 291).Footnote ¹¹ The diatribe against the Atticists is framed by Atticus’ adamant objections against Cato and older orators as a stylistic model, which touches on the core questions of canon building and the value of older authors for literary history and criticism (292–300).Footnote ¹²

The Atticists employed a restrained and (overly) learned style, as in the case of Calvus:

Cicero will go on to call it thinness or dryness (exilitas, 284) and will remark that the proper admirer of the Attic style “despises tastelessness and arrogance as though some kind of illness of speech, but approves of the orator’s health and wholeness as though it were scrupulous respectfulness” (insulsitatem … et insolentiam tamquam insaniam quandam orationis odit, sanitatem autem et integritatem quasi religionem et verecundiam oratoris probat, 284). Cicero provides both negative and positive versions of Atticism, which establishes a tension that will remain important throughout the discussion: he does not reject Atticism wholesale, but rather begins to redefine what Atticism should mean in order to suggest that it is one crucial element within the true orator’s full stylistic repertoire.Footnote ¹³ We can bracket this ambiguity for now and revisit it in conjunction with Cicero’s other challenges to the meaning of Attici in his attacks on the Roman Atticists.

The Distortion of Calvus

The main orator Cicero aligns with Atticism is Calvus, but circumspection is warranted, since the criticisms do not match what little we possess of his speeches or later testimony about them.Footnote ¹⁴ References in the later tradition outline a dispute between Calvus, Cicero, and Brutus. Seneca the Elder, Quintilian, Tacitus, and Pliny, variously contradict the Brutus.Footnote ¹⁵ Seneca notes that Calvus took Demosthenes as a model for his compositio and possessed a lively style (Con. 7.4.8). Pliny set him alongside Demosthenes as a model for imitation, highlighting the forcefulness of both speakers (vim tantorum virorum, Ep. 1.2.2).Footnote ¹⁶ Seneca quotes Calvus playing to the audience’s emotions in the epilogue of the third speech in defense of Messius: “believe me, there’s no shame in taking pity” (credite mihi, non est turpe misereri, Con. 7.4.8). The emotional appeal concludes with the powerful – and notoriously Ciceronian – rhythm: resolved cretic plus trochee. A fragment from Calvus’ second speech against Vatinius, whom Cicero defended at the urging of Caesar and Pompey (and to his own chagrin), has likely been modeled on the famous climax from Demosthenes’ speech On the Crown (18.179).Footnote ¹⁷

In Tacitus’ Dialogus Aper criticizes Cicero’s generation for being outdated:

Even this staunch critic accords Calvus some virtues that Cicero found wanting: accommodation to the audience and embellishment (ornatus) of words and thoughts; both men do cite Calvus’ lack of forcefulness.Footnote ¹⁸ Twenty-one of Calvus’ speeches still existed for Aper to heap scorn on (cum unum et viginti, ut puto, libros reliquerit, vix in una aut altera oratiuncula satis facit, 21.1). If Calvus was as deficient as Cicero claims, his impressive afterlife seems unlikely. Quintilian happily praises him: “his style is venerable and serious, it is also restrained and often vigorous” (est et sancta et gravis oratio et castigata et frequenter vehemens quoque, Quint. Inst. 10.115). Vatinius himself was moved in court to interrupt Calvus: “I implore you, judges: surely I don’t deserve to be condemned just because this man speaks well?” (rogo vos, iudices: num, si iste disertus est, ideo me damnari oportet?).Footnote ¹⁹ Calvus seems to have emerged as a challenge to Cicero’s supremacy, and criticizing his one-sided adherence to Atticism is steeped in concerns about the appropriate models to imitate. It is only speculation, but perhaps Cicero already feared losing the reception wars – were younger contemporaries, including Brutus, in the thrall of his recently dead rival?

Lysias, Cato, and History

Cicero returns to the complex questions about what to imitate and how to assess Greeks versus Romans, and his answers invariably reflect his evolutionary understanding. The desire to integrate the stylistic debate into the larger historical thrust of the Brutus explains the perplexing, if crucial, syncrisis of Cato and Lysias (63–69), revisited in Atticus’ later charges of antiquarianism (293–300). The first similarity cited is their prolific production of speeches (Catonis autem orationes non minus multae fere sunt quam Attici Lysiae, 63), an oddly superficial similarity, which becomes the springboard for several others (non nulla similitudo, 63).Footnote ²⁰ Emphasis on their productivity may foreground Lysias’ primary activity as a logographos, a professional speech writer. He was born in Athens, but because his father was not an Athenian he was a metic without full citizen rights and could not have spoken in the courts or public assemblies (although he did fulfill numerous public duties, as Cicero notes).Footnote ²¹ This is an important distinction, since Cato’s speeches presumably all had a specific political or juridical occasion to explain their existence, and for Cicero eloquence is nearly unimaginable outside of a specific civic context. Cicero here may allude to a fundamental difference between the two: one active only as a kind of Greek intellectual for hire, the other as a dyed-in-the-wool public figure of the middle republic.Footnote ²²

In terms of style “they are pointed, elegant, clever, terse; but that famous Greek has fared better in all manner of praise” (acuti sunt, elegantes faceti breves; sed ille Graecus ab omni laude felicior, 63). Subtilitas, unobtrusive exactness, above all is Lysias’ chief virtue, but Cato has several too: “who is weightier in praise or harsher in criticism, more acute in thoughts, more exact in demonstrating and explaining?” (quis illo gravior in laudando, acerbior in vituperando, in sententiis argutior, in docendo edisserendoque subtilior?, 65). The differences from Lysias, especially weight and sharpness, along with the later claim that Cato excels in the various schemata, suggest an orator much more like Cicero than like a contemporary Atticist (or even Lysias himself). Despite Cato’s antiquity and acknowledgment that his speeches could be updated (68), Cicero presents him as the ideal starting point for substantive oratory, the first stage in a trajectory toward Cicero. Cato also has a remarkable stylistic range.Footnote ²³ For this reason he inaugurates the evolution of the art at Rome, much as Crassus’ speech of 106 inaugurates the evolution of modern style.Footnote ²⁴

Diatribe against the Atticists (285–91)

The ultimate purpose of this syncrisis becomes clear some two hundred chapters later, when Cicero revisits Atticism in a diatribe that targets its unnamed adherents – presumably detractors of Cicero – and the models they imitate. As critics have observed, this “notable example of monologistic dialogue” is “initiated by the author with an imaginary interlocutor whose objections and comments the author in turn snatches up and refutes.”Footnote ²⁵

Imitation of Lysias alone might seem to be the main purpose of his dispute with the Atticists, since Cicero insists on Demosthenes’ superiority and proposes the imitation of several models.Footnote ²⁶ The syncrisis of Cato and Lysias and the heroization of Demosthenes suggest that Cicero attacks the Lysianic predilections of Roman neo-Atticists. Yet the Brutus and the Orator only imply but never confirm that exclusive preference.Footnote ²⁷ Lysias was named, along with Hyperides, as a model for the Atticists in the earlier discussion of Cato.Footnote ²⁸ The emphasis on Lysias emerges clearly only in the Orator, and even there it is only part of Cicero’s arguments.Footnote ²⁹ We have no evidence, for example, that Calvus followed Lysias alone; Quintilian calls him an “imitator of Attic speakers” (imitator … Atticorum, Inst. 10.115), the plural suggesting more than one model.

Uncertainty about the extent of Lysianic imitation reflects the larger impossibility of distilling clear arguments from Cicero’s criticisms, not least because the diatribe style tends to locate inconsistencies or catch out naiveté attributed to an imaginary interlocutor without then fleshing out the terms and logical consequences of the questions or answers. Confusion is compounded by Cicero’s failure to propose clear criteria or to indicate how multifaceted imitation works. He also refuses to clearly define Atticus: quite to the contrary, as I noted earlier, he variously deploys the term, allowing it to mean different things at different points to best suit each argument. These conspiring factors have led scholars to varying interpretations. Yet recognizing rather than dismissing the shortcomings and ambiguities will better illuminate his arguments.

The first claim, “I wish to imitate the Attici” (Atticos … volo imitari, 285), is easily demolished. Cicero asks which Attici, since the term, taken literally, indicates a diverse group of classical Athenian speakers: Demosthenes, Lysias, Hyperides, Aeschines, etc. But one can’t imitate fundamentally different styles simultaneously:

His unstated target is the Roman Atticists’ allegiance to a single “Attic” norm, the misguided belief in a notional essence of style dominant in the city of Athens and its canon of speakers. The emphasis on dissimilarity also allows Cicero to respond to a later claim from his fictive interlocutor: “We want to be like the Attic speakers” (Atticorum similes esse volumus, 287). Having already made the case for dissimilarity, he swiftly discards the attendant possibility of imitation: “how can you [imitate men] who are different from one another and from others too” (quo modo, qui sunt et inter se dissimiles et aliorum?, 287).

The absurdity of the fictive response is brought out fully when Cicero moves from the classical models to Demetrius of Phalerum. Cicero trades on the geographical ambiguity of the term Atticus by focusing on Demetrius’ association with Athens: “Athens itself seems to waft from his speeches; yet he’s what you might call more flowery than Hyperides or Lysias” (ex illius orationibus redolere ipsae Athenae videntur. at est floridior, ut ita dicam, quam Hyperides, quam Lysias, 285). The implicit argument is that no one (including the classicizing Attici) will want to imitate Demetrius’ pleasant, learned, and yet impractical style, which Cicero earlier slighted (37). The term floridior also emphasizes that Demetrius, a practitioner of the middle style, embellished his speeches, unlike the Atticists with their smooth, simple leanness.Footnote ³⁰

Cicero undermines the notional ideal of “Atticism” by adducing the diversity of styles among Athenians and then offering a geographical argument ad absurdum – shouldn’t anything produced in Athens be called Atticus?Footnote ³¹ The Atticists presumably emphasized certain qualities and authors while overlooking other valid details and styles, as any movement based on a collection of models invariably must. This does not mean that its adherents failed to find in Atticism a coherent and recognizable program, and catching out fictive interlocutors should not be confused with sound argument. To isolate a weak spot in the movement’s self-portrayal by quibbling over an ambiguous term is hardly a masterstroke of logic or criticism.

Instead, his strongest arguments are integrated into the larger intellectual framework of the Brutus. We next get a historical example of Greeks who imitated classical speakers:

In essence, Cicero says: “Let’s put your idea to the test and consider a Greek example of what it means to ‘imitate the Attici,’ now that it’s become clear that there’s such a diversity of models.” Pointedly, the two models are Lysias and Demosthenes. Charisius imitated Lysias by writing speeches for others, a rather weak connection, since it entails copying a practice rather than emulating a style. Demochares follows Demosthenes, although Cicero will not claim that explicitly, relying instead on family lineage as a surrogate for artistic allegiance. It’s hardly a ringing endorsement, and little is known of Demochares’ speeches and rhetorical afterlife beyond what Cicero tells us. The emphasis on a style of history appropriate to oratory anticipates that later claim that Thucydides’ speeches possessed an inimitable – often incomprehensible – denseness (287–88, discussed below), as modern students of the speeches in his history readily attest.Footnote ³² Both examples make clear the impossibility of imitating fundamentally different styles.

Yet that point had already been made, and its true purpose is the withering criticism of Hegesias. Hegesias believed that earlier, notionally classical orators were uncouth (paene agrestes); he sounds like Cicero’s contemporary Attici, who similarly criticized earlier Roman authors. Most importantly, Hegesias allegedly “invented” Asianism, a crucial detail passed over in blaring silence.Footnote ³³ These lineages are a rhetorical masterstroke, aligning the Attici with the origins of Asianism and suggesting that veneration of Lysias is not at all Atticism, but a false version of Atticism that is ultimately revealed, through recourse to historical proofs, to be Asianism. The concluding stylistic bravado (tam fractum, tam minutum, tam in ipsa, quam tamen consequitur, concinnitate puerile?) reinforces in form the content of the argument: the tricolon crescendo concludes with the quintessentially Ciceronian rhythm, resolved cretic plus trochee. These metrical fireworks are made possible by not one but two instances of “long-range” hyperbaton, postponing concinnitate after the relative clause and puerile to the end.Footnote ³⁴ Such hyperbaton, Jonathan Powell notes, tends to mark passages “with a somewhat higher than usual rhetorical or emotional ‘temperature.’”Footnote ³⁵

Thucydides, Lysias, Cato

Notice of Demochares’ histories paved the way for discussion of Thucydides (287–88), whose speeches in his history have no place in the courtroom despite their grandeur. Cicero admires and dismisses them at a stroke; he has neither the talent nor the desire to imitate them: imitari neque possim, si velim, nec velim fortasse, si possim (287). Most striking is the abrupt segue into the odd, and seemingly unjustified, claim that Thucydides’ inapposite oratory results from his antiquated style:

Cicero here relies on several unstated arguments.Footnote ³⁶ Denseness and harshness mark Thucydides as outdated, which essentially reverses cause and effect: not “Thucydides is antiquated and therefore harsh” but “Thucydides is harsh and therefore antiquated.” Cicero seeks to explain a signal feature of Thucydidean style that might have little to do with his antiquity – Cicero readily admits that his historical works are not appropriate for the courts, but this is surely a question of genre and personal style as much as age. The contrastingly fulsome praise in de Oratore may also give us pause.Footnote ³⁷

The arguments about his antiquity are crafted with the Atticists in mind. The emphasis on the age of a suitable model does not seem to have a place elsewhere in the discussion of Attic style. It does, however, anticipate Atticus’ objections about relative standards (292–97). This preemptive strike allows Cicero to turn the tables on the Atticists. Atticus, having bided his time, challenges Cicero’s attachment to Cato (and Crassus) and charges him with Socratic irony. Cicero – and we would do well to believe him – rejects any suggestion that he was employing irony: his qualified admiration for Cato and Crassus was sincere.Footnote ³⁸

Atticus levels criticism at the outdated speakers up to and including Crassus’ generation. He rejects the comparison of Cato to Lysias because of the latter’s unquestionable polished acuity and chides the likening of Cato’s Origines to Thucydides and Philistus:

Atticus cites the appraisal of Cato (66, discussed below), but mention of Thucydides also sends us back to the immediately preceding discussion of him. The placement of Atticus’ objections has been engineered perfectly to follow on Cicero’s Thucydidean digression, which, unlike Atticus’ false dilemma – either presentism or antiquarianism – proposes a middle ground in the assessment and imitation of stylistic models of the past. In line with Atticist positions, Atticus essentially argues that a style is either modern (contemporary) or antiquated (the generation of Crassus and older) and that Cicero unreasonably defends outdated style. Through Atticus, Cicero has his detractors claim that he is on the wrong side of a dilemma, an antiquarian to their presentism. This is, however, a false dilemma, and having manufactured it Cicero manages in advance, through his criticism of Thucydides, to move beyond its straitjacketed terms, presenting himself instead as a happy adherent of a mature stylistic mean, neither too old nor too young.Footnote ⁴⁰ The arguments here accord well with Cicero’s avowed “golden mean,” which figures so prominently in the narrative of his own development toward a tempered “Rhodian” style between the extremes of Atticism and Asianism.Footnote ⁴¹ Cicero has carefully preempted any charge of antiquarianism.

Atticus’ claim that Cicero compared Cato to Thucydides and Philistus is important as well because Atticus misunderstands Cicero’s earlier comments, a meaningful error that redirects our focus onto the earlier statements:Footnote ⁴²

Theopompus overshadowed Philistus and Thucydides, just as recent authors overshadow older ones; Cicero nowhere claims that Cato rivaled these Greeks.Footnote ⁴³ Chronology is the crucial issue, and Cicero draws attention to it in Atticus’ later remarks in order to impose his own interpretation of what is antiquated and what is modern. He achieves this precisely through the complex analogy of historians and orators. That extended comparison is already hinted at with the passing notice that Demosthenes overshadowed Lysias.Footnote ⁴⁴ Thucydides (ca. 460–ca. 400) was a rough contemporary of Lysias (ca. 460/445–ca. 380)Footnote ⁴⁵ and appears in the Brutus at the origins of Greek oratory, first named alongside Pericles (27) as the oldest extant record of oratory and then also associated with one of the early generations of speakers: Alcibiades, Critias, and Theramenes (29). Theopompus (ca. 400/380–ca. 320), by contrast, was a later near-contemporary of Demosthenes (384–322). Cicero has crafted a fairly rough analogy of older and younger historians in parallel to older and younger orators in the Greek world.Footnote ⁴⁶

Cicero, as so often, makes his arguments not through close stylistic analysis, but by relying on cross-generic developments and patterns that plausibly organize the past into a coherent order. Atticus does not object to the claim that later authors eclipsed their forerunners; he focuses instead on the problem of cross-cultural syncrisis between Lysias and Cato.Footnote ⁴⁷ Cicero had earlier remarked that “the same men who delight in the Greeks’ antiquity and in that preciseness they call Attic, do not even recognize it in Cato” (hi ipsi, qui in Graecis antiquitate delectantur eaque subtilitate, quam Atticam appellant, hanc in Catone ne noverunt quidem, 67). He manufactures a dilemma for his opponents: either you accept Demosthenes’ superiority over Lysias, or you choose to value Lysias, despite his antiquity, in which case you must appreciate the merits of Cato as well.Footnote ⁴⁸

With Thucydides out of the way, the fictive interlocutors finally cite Cicero’s hero:

The idea quickly advances from selecting appropriate models to recognizing Demosthenes’ inimitable virtuosity, as Cicero admits.Footnote ⁴⁹ This is in stark contrast to the Atticists, who can acquire the limited and restrained style that they pursue. This might at first seem like defeat, but Cicero offers two crucial points, which again rest on several unstated assumptions. That Demosthenes is hard, indeed impossible, to imitate is precisely a reason in favor of emulating him. The essential nature of oratory is its difficulty because of all that it demands, and Cicero here turns that difficulty into a virtue. It is crucial, however, not to imitate the style of a single individual but to emulate an ideal possessing all the requisite stylistic virtues. Imitation of Demosthenes implies ceaseless striving after an unattainable goal, which requires constant improvement, in individuals and across the history of the art. We are reminded too that Demosthenes may be the best model but cannot be the only model. Cicero’s elevation of Demosthenes anticipates the classicizing attitude that Quintilian will take toward Cicero: he is a preeminent model, but diverse authors must be read and emulated for their distinctive virtues.

At the heart of this ideal lies a paradox that is also a justification of Cicero’s literary history: one model is best and yet also unattainable. As a result, contemporary orators must look to the long history of Greek and Roman style with all its potential resources. The complexity and difficulty of oratory make varietas not just an aesthetic – but also a historical – ideal: diversity must be sought from past models. For the Greek tradition this means appreciating the ranks, differences, forcefulness, and variety of the Attic canon (videat ne ignoret et gradus et dissimilitudines et vim et varietatem Atticorum, 285).Footnote ⁵⁰

Cicero also enlists help from his own history of Roman oratory against the Atticists. The seemingly artless comparison of Gaius Titius, a Roman eques contemporary with Lucilius, is devastating:

The comparison to Attic style, matched with Titius’ lack of education and training, is hardly innocent. Clever refinement, historical precedents, and sophistication could be mastered by an eques without the support of Greek learning or significant practice.Footnote ⁵¹ To equate his Latin with an Attic style lacking adornment is a backhanded way to suggest that Roman Atticists have no genuine connection to Greek intellectual culture or forensic practice. Yet such learning was a defining characteristic of Roman Attici. The description places the style of Roman Atticism far back on the trajectory of stylistic development at Rome (second half of the second century bce), reinforcing the claim that Atticism is outdated. The analogy surely contains a social and political dig as well: great oratory is the province of senators, not mere equestrians, yet Titius must have avoided a political career and regular activity as a patronus.Footnote ⁵²

Recognition of diverse styles begins with the contrast of Crassus and Scaevola (148) but comes to fruition with Cotta and Sulpicius: “And we should notice in these orators the fact that those who are different from one another can still be the best. You see, nothing was so different as Cotta from Sulpicius” (Atque in his oratoribus illud animadvertendum est, posse esse summos qui inter se sint dissimiles. nihil enim tam dissimile quam Cotta Sulpicio, 204). Historical depth in the Roman tradition allows for stylistic breadth, as later authors build on their predecessors, whose relevance abides even as their stylistic flaws may grow increasingly evident and in need of updating. The number of authors drawn on can thus always increase, precisely because literary history, by its nature, must incessantly accommodate as-yet-unknown innovations.

The wealth of possible options would be overwhelming, and Cicero offers an ingenious workaround to the problem of knowing which authors to imitate and how, especially if one’s true model (Demosthenes) is inimitable. His discussion unexpectedly shifts from stylistic achievements to pragmatic considerations: emulate not individual styles but rather successful orators in large public venues. The abrupt shift in logic depends on an unstated assumption he argued for earlier: the paramount criterion is the orator’s effect on the audience.Footnote ⁵³ And the greatest cases demand large crowds. Unsurprisingly, Demosthenes enthralls a crowd of enthusiastic onlookers, while the circle of onlookers (corona) and supporters (advocati) abandon the Atticists (289).Footnote ⁵⁴ The Roman Attici attain the stylistic refinement they seek out, but also render their speech unsuitable for all but the smallest venues, such as civil trials before a praetor in the comitium. When emphasizing effectiveness over aesthetic refinement, Cicero names Attic speakers politically active in grand venues: Pericles, Hyperides, Aeschines, and Demosthenes (290). Conspicuously, Lysias is left off the list.Footnote ⁵⁵

Redefining and Coopting Atticism

Another crucial line of attack against the Atticists is the complex and casuistic redefinition of Atticus. This strategy goes well beyond questioning the movement’s learned simplicity or its canon of imitation. Cicero destabilizes the meaning of Atticus in order to question the legitimacy of Atticism. True Atticism should embrace all rhetorical virtues, but Roman Atticism aspires only to the simple style (genus tenue). Cicero, in turn, defines this as a minimum baseline of oratorical propriety. Once he has argued for this restricted definition of Roman Atticism, he can then subsume it under the full panoply of requisite oratorical values: the genus tenue is but one register that the true orator masters. Cicero thereby defines and appropriates the Greek oratorical tradition in order to privilege his own comprehensive program for Roman oratory.

This attack on Atticism is carried out partly in the diatribe and partly elsewhere, and it is largely indirect. Nowhere does Cicero engage in an extended abstract debate over the precise technical or doctrinal meaning of Attikismos, even if he occasionally touches on its closest analogues, urbanitas (170–72) or Latinitas (140, 252–62). He focuses instead on the polyvalent terms Atticus/Attici.Footnote ⁵⁶ This might seem the weaker strategy, but it allows him to manipulate the flexibility and ambiguity of Atticus to craft rhetorical arguments that are more compelling than logical or doctrinal arguments. Cicero crucially redefines Atticism in order to coopt the stylistic precedent of Attic orators and through them the political and artistic authority of Athens. He begins by exploiting ambiguities of geography and identity inherent in the term Atticus in order to undermine the stylistic claims of Atticism.

The discussion of Lysias is the first part of a continuous strategy to destabilize the term Atticus. It begins with identity: is he Athenian or Syracusan?

Cicero cannot seriously entertain the prospect that Lysias might be considered Sicilian, but inclusion of Timaeus’ claim does point up the weak conventionality of the label Atticus.Footnote ⁵⁸ More than just the learned insertion of a stray detail, it is the first salvo in a terminological battle. The notice anticipates crucial questions of definition: what does Atticus really mean, and if no clear answer exists, what use is the term?

Certainly in several cases the term maintains its conventional sense: as a substantival adjective in the plural it essentially means “Athenians” or “Athenian speakers.”Footnote ⁵⁹ As an adjective it also denotes “Attic” style.Footnote ⁶⁰ The semantic ambiguity of Atticus comes to the fore when it serves as a stylistic label with a restricted scope (“[good] Attic speakers” or “[good] Attic style”) or indicates the term’s geographical meaning. In the example of Demetrius of Phalerum, Cicero exploits the polyvalence of the term:

Reference to Athens makes clear the term’s geographical aspect. Demetrius is unquestionably Attic, both geographically and lexically (presumably what Cicero means is that he used recognizably Attic language), but as a stylist he differs considerably from the classical generation of Attic speakers whom the Roman Atticists presumably took as their models.

A similar point but from a different perspective emerges from the mention of Theophrastus in the discussion of urbanitas:

Cicero likens Attic speech to Roman Latinitas, and the anecdote does double duty: undermining the definition of Atticus and showing that qualitative speech is independent of geographical origin. Theophrastus, a native of Lesbos, lived in Athens and became the premier speaker of his day. Quintilian’s version brings out Theophrastus’ hypercorrectness: he gave away his foreign origin by seeming to be too Attic (Inst. 8.1.2–3).Footnote ⁶²

Cicero had already begun to undermine Atticus earlier in the syncrisis of Lysias and Cato: “The same men, who delight in the Greeks’ antiquity and that subtlety they call Attic, do not even recognize it in Cato” (hi ipsi, qui in Graecis antiquitate delectantur eaque subtilitate, quam Atticam appellant, hanc in Catone ne noverunt quidem, 67). He objects to the Atticists’ attempts to make a stylistic feature the province of one group alone. While defending Cato he shows up the conventionality of Atticus. Like most designations of national or group identity, the term and its legitimizing assumptions are contingent and malleable. Atticus is not a fixed essence, but rather an identity that is performatively constructed in the process of naming and in the term’s subsequent reception. The conventional instability allows Cicero to question its meaning, to suggest alternative ones, and to associate the term with a different set of values.

This revaluation is also achieved in a less perceptible fashion, by drawing on his interlocutor’s authority and the name he bears, Atticus. The words Atticus/Attici/Attice pervade the Brutus, and the virtual ubiquity of ‘Attic-ness’ is carefully manufactured by Cicero.Footnote ⁶³ The presence of Titus Pomponius Atticus as an interlocutor calls special attention to the term and its polyvalence. His cognomen, we are reminded, derives from his adopted city: “And whenever I consider Greece, your Athens especially, Atticus, meets my gaze and shines forth” (in quam cum intueor, maxime mihi occurrunt, Attice, et quasi lucent Athenae tuae, 26).

Set against Atticus and his cognomen are the aspirations of Calvus: “Attic[us] is what our friend Calvus wanted to be called as an orator” (Atticum se … Calvus noster dici oratorem volebat, 284). Named for his adopted home, “your Athens” (Athenae tuae, 26) as Cicero calls it with an imperialist touch, Atticus adapts Greek scholarship and new knowledge to Roman ends in the production of the Liber Annalis. This activity sharply contrasts with Calvus’ failure to adapt his philhellenism to a Roman context.Footnote ⁶⁴ We are reminded of another failure, Hegesias, who similarly courted the label (se ita putat Atticum, 286). Geographically and stylistically he was Asian, and the language of the exemplum contributes to the widespread undermining of the label Atticus. The absurdity of the term’s geographical denotation similarly emerges in the Ciceropaideia: Menippus of Stratonicea, the most eloquent man of Asia, garners a place among the Attici based on his faultless style (315).

Cicero traverses several stages of his argument in order to make the claim that faultlessness is the primary quality of Roman Atticism. After challenging Atticus as a label for geography or identity (“Athenian [speakers]”) and then criticizing the Atticists for their meager style, he begins to redefine Atticus as a stylistic tendency. Of the successful orators who attract a crowd, Cicero says: “to whomever this happens, know that he is speaking in the Attic fashion, as we have heard for Pericles, Hyperides, Aeschines, and especially Demosthenes” (haec cui contingant, eum scito Attice dicere, ut de Pericle audimus, ut de Hyperide, ut de Aeschine, de ipso quidem Demosthene maxume, 290). This maximalistic ideal, based on a principle of effectiveness through a diversity of styles (as discussed above), is thoroughly opposed to the Roman Atticists, whom he pigeonholes as practitioners of the genus tenue. He does not reject Atticism, but rather accords it a place at smaller venues demanding less oratorical vigor: “if it’s the mark of the Attici to speak in a restrained and meager manner, let them by all rights be Attici; but let them come to the comitium and speak before a standing judge: the court benches require a greater and fuller voice” (si anguste et exiliter dicere est Atticorum, sint sane Attici; sed in comitium veniant, ad stantem iudicem dicant: subsellia grandiorem et pleniorem vocem desiderant, 289).

This provisional acceptance of Atticism is possible only because Cicero exploits ambiguities in his own redefinitions of Atticus. He first criticizes it as a wrongly assumed label (“Roman Atticism”), when in fact it should designate the great range of Athenian models (“Real Atticism”). Since the Atticists insist on their style of speech, however, Cicero finally concedes that it can designate a minimum level of competence, the faultless employment of the genus tenue. The status of Atticism as a kind of minimum level of adequacy is essentially a negative definition, the prospect that “the mark of the Atticists is to have nothing bothersome or inept” (nihil habere molestiarum nec ineptiarum Atticorum est, 315). By aligning Atticism with the genus tenue he can then claim that any true orator must, by definition, have mastered that stylistic register.

With greater precision he later distinguishes the Attic from the grand style:

Cicero has redefined Roman Atticism not to reject it out of hand but in such a way that allows him to acknowledge its value as one weapon in the full rhetorical arsenal. His minimalist definition of Atticism and maximalist definition of the orator allow him to coopt Atticism, placing it safely under the all-encompassing umbrella of Ciceronian force, fullness, and variety. Cicero’s style here reinforces the conceptual point (as we saw with brevitas at the beginning of this chapter). This conclusion to the diatribe against Atticism uses a distinctly Attic flourish: a smooth sententia with simple terse language and an unobtrusively chiastic word arrangement.Footnote ⁶⁵

Cicero disagrees with the Roman Atticists not to defend himself against charges of being “Asian” but to stake a claim as to what “Attic” properly means and what type of orator best represents an ideal that draws on Athenian models. Cicero’s response is essentially “I have no problem with Atticism, as long as we understand what it actually means. As a result, I’m at least as Attic as anyone else, but more importantly, I’m not just Attic.” For all the arguments against Atticism, the movement is not in itself his main opponent in the Brutus, and his aim is hardly to accurately document a doctrinal disagreement with fidelity.Footnote ⁶⁶ Atticism is as much a foil as it is a target.

It is certainly true that the multifaceted criticisms made in the Brutus anticipate the strict equation of the Attic style with the genus tenue and its duty to instruct (docere) in the Orator.Footnote ⁶⁷ Yet the Brutus integrates the Atticism debate into the narratives of artistic evolution, stylistic appropriation and Roman identity, contemporary politics, and Cicero’s aesthetic commitments. The Orator criticizes Atticism in different terms and to different ends, once again pigeonholing the Atticists as practitioners of the plain style, but in order to provide a rhetorical and intellectual justification of prose rhythm. Considerable overlap exists between the Brutus and the Orator, but the local requirements in each text are what ultimately shape the local forms of Atticism.Footnote ⁶⁸ The importance of history in the Brutus means that opposing Cicero’s values ultimately means being on the wrong side of Roman history, failing to understand that Roman oratory depends on the diversity found in the Greek and Roman traditions. Aesthetic history in the Brutus is inextricable from civic history, which places Cicero’s detractors in a bind: to deny his stylistic argument is to deny the greatness of Rome’s past and thus to render oratory meaningless in the present.